So we may have gained an extra two Turtles.

2020 update our tank today!

We are still undecided on their names at the moment but we are either going down the route of reef and sea in Japanese or more Warlords.

My suggestion was they did a little research into the Japanese warlords and see if their personalities seemed similar.

Thomas thinks we should perhaps keep to Japanese sea-related names to match Kaiyo but he also likes the idea of more warlords in the house lol.

  • 5 turtles need more so New Tank
  • temporary set up
  • Time for a massive re organisation
  • Slowly building up a basking area
  • More layers Smaller stones
  • Now sand
  • then substrate
  • lastly water

We took some time keeping 3 tanks then slowly progressed to bring the little stinkpot in with Kaiyo and our two reeves. Then slowly introduced the oldest and new stinkpot into the big tank the new turtles came with.

Once they were all getting along and settled we decided to redesign their tank. We did loads of investigation to find how to do it the best ways too within our budget. It was exciting the turtles wouldn’t be able to use the tank for a few weeks but it was fun getting it all set up.

  • After 3 weeks still turtle free plants now starting to rout
  • 3 weeks after set up
  • after 3 weeks plants now out of the water still no tutles
  • 3 weeks later
  • filter attached is an old but still going strong Eheim
  • Some of the medium we have in the external filter
  • some more of the media used
  • an other picture of filter

For our Filter Media, we went with the following. I have listed these from bottom to top in our canister filter. our filter has 4 separate layers within it.

  • Biohome (sintered glass media) filter noodles
  • Bioceramic filter noodles
  • Evolution Aqua plastic things with the course blue filter pad on top
  • bagged Carbon media the other both covered with filter fluff and the finer white filter pad (both pictured) on top

When we could finally add them they had the water mixed up again in minutes of release!

  • from clear beauty to muddy waters
  • not that the turtles seemed to mind
  • They had great fun investigating
  • and running up and down the bank
  • It did slowly start to clear up and we had to clean the filter and pipes a few more times before it all settled.
  • but the guys loved it all the same
  • even Kaiyo had great fun exploring about.

We all had fun learning about the best way to set this tank up to about how to offer the turtles the best conditions we can. It has been interesting learning about the natural behaviours of turtles.

2020 update: Our old filter is still available to buy here it was absolutely fantastic it was about 20 years old when ours packed in and we decided to replace it with a slightly cheaper option this time with this one here.